Volunteers with True the Vote, a Tea Party group that claims it is trying to fight voter fraud by challenging the right of voters to vote, may have committed fraud themselves. Plunderbund, an Ohio-based political blog, reported Monday that members of the group attempted to sign up as poll observers in African American-heavy precincts in central Ohio, but may have forged signatures to do so.

While local candidates officials had authorized members of the group to serve as designated observers on forms filed in October, five of the six Franklin County candidates had withdrawn permission to use their signatures prior to the submission of this week’s forms. According to one candidate, the True the Vote volunteers simply “forged” her name onto the document — possibly a 5th degree felony.

If you’re inclined to think of this as likely structural vote rigging, I’ve seen commentary on it from credible people saying both that aging touch screens can misbehave like this (without tampering, that is), and that it’s likely a badly calibrated screen, easy for poll workers to fix. One post said the machine had been taken out of service.

I do, however, think that small Curacao has had better organized and more competently executed elections than the country supposed to be democracy #1. That’s not looking at the candidates or issues, of course, just the election itself.

A touch screen that out of whack in the most technologically advanced nation in the world is inexcusable.

Every single time I voted in the Netherlands, every single time, I did not have to wait AT ALL at the polling station. No matter what time of day I went voting. There’s no early voting at all in the Netherlands, everybody votes on election day. Percentage of the population bothering to vote isn’t all that different from the US, so, really, what’s up with those lines? How dysfunctional is this election process?

I think P.J. O’Rourke once said that people don’t line up around the block to vote for the status quo. He was being snarky about some poor country. Clearly he was wrong.

Desiato on
November 7th, 2012 at 20:06:

@Bill L: I’m missing what indicates that it was not a calibration problem. The post says (or has been updated to say): [Update: Mother Jones is now reporting that PA Dept of State officials are saying “they recalibrated the machine, did a test run, and put it back online.”

The United States Army is developing a weapon that can reach — and destroy — any location on Earth within an hour. At the same time, power lines held up by wooden poles dangle over the streets of Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey.Hurricane Sandy ripped them apart there and in communities across the East Coast last week, and many places remain without electricity. That’s America, where high-tech options are available only to the elite, and the rest live under conditions comparable to a those of a developing nation…

The truth is that we simply no longer understand America. Looking at the country from Germany and Europe, we see a foreign culture. The political system is in the hands of big business and its lobbyists. The checks and balances have failed. And a perverse mix of irresponsibility, greed and religious zealotry dominate public opinion.

Umm…perhaps this is payback for the deluge of “Is the E.U. Doomed?” headlines we have seen in the press in the last year or so. Truth is…more complicated.

As she watches the President from her tablet, kitchen television, and sits comfortably in her expensive home…. But to be fair, this is probably the poorest woman that Mitt Romney would agree to be associated with. I mean really, is that only a 19″ flatscreen in her Kitchen? For shame.

Nice to see the whole “Didn’t clean up Bush and Cheney’s shambles soon enough for me” angle didn’t work nearly as much as Obama is a Nazi Coummunist Muslim Martian. State district maps like South Carolina showed that clearly: the farther out into backwoods bumcluck land you got the reader the map became.

A woman caught on camera driving on a sidewalk to avoid a Cleveland school bus that was unloading children will have to stand at an intersection wearing a sign warning about idiots.

Court records show a Cleveland Municipal Court judge on Monday ordered 32-year-old Shena Hardin to stand at an intersection for two days next week. She will have to wear a sign saying: “Only an idiot drives on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus.”

I thought, “Poor, sad person, in a hurry to get to a job, etc.” However, she did this many times…and was finally caught. So will any punishment stop her from being an idiot?

The Federal Court of Australia ruled that S&P’s AAA rating of constant proportion debt obligation notes created by banking giant ABN AMRO and sold to the councils of 13 Australian towns, had been “misleading and deceptive”.

It is the first time a ratings agency has faced trial over synthetic derivatives and the case could set an important precedent for future litigation.

“(It is a) decision that is likely to have global implications, and be felt hardest in Europe and the U.S. where similar products were sold to banks and pension funds,” said Piper Alderman, the law firm representing the councils.

“No longer will rating agencies be able to hide behind disclaimers to absolve themselves from liability.”

Politicians of one party do not set voting schedules to favor their side and harm the other. Politicians do not move around voting places to gain advantages for themselves or to disadvantage their opponents. In fact, in almost no other country do politicians have any say in the administration of elections at all.

(…)

In no other country, including federal systems such as Germany, Canada and Australia, does the citizen’s opportunity to vote depend on the affluence and competence of his or her local government.

In every other democracy, the vote is the means by which the people choose between the competing political parties — not one more weapon by which the parties compete.

The United States is an exceptional nation, but it is not always exceptional for good. The American voting system too is an exception: It is the most error-prone, the most susceptible to fraud, the most vulnerable to unfairness and one of the least technologically sophisticated on earth. After the 2000 fiasco, Americans resolved to do better. Isn’t it past time to make good on that resolution?

The major political parties are both wrong when it comes to taxing and distributing to the middle class the capital of the wealthiest 1 percent. It’s true that some of the richest Americans have been making money with money — investing in efficiency innovations rather than investing to create jobs. They are doing what their professors taught them to do, but times have changed.

If the I.R.S. taxes their wealth away and distributes it to everyone else, it still won’t help the economy. Without empowering products and services in our economy, most of this redistribution will be spent buying sustaining innovations — replacing consumption with consumption. We must give the wealthiest an incentive to invest for the long term. This can create growth.

Consider this: Canada is trying to get a deal with China to permit Chinese to be able to invest here more easily. There is, according to the government, not enough (i.e. cheap, no-questions-asked) capital in Canada to fund things like the tar sands development, clubbing baby seals, whatever.

This, after 100 years of getting capital from the U.S. (“Selling Out to the Americans”) for things like railways, canals, dams etc. American capitalists are no longer interested in anything risky, apparently.

The language needs two different words. Investment with the aim to rake in money needs a word different from Investment to sustain a community for a long time. Both make the ‘investor’ richer, but in different ways, in different time frames. There’s “risk” – what if they close that loophole? – and “risk” – what if this project fails?

Taxes are usually never meant to “redistribute” wealth – they are meant to fund long term projects that benefit society – like schools, roads, police.

Often, the wealthiest 1 percent are NOT investing in the future of society, and taxing them for that is worth it.

One of the suggestions in that article is to create more distinctions than just “short term capital gains” and “long term capital gains”. A number of people have suggested very high taxes on intraday trades (flipping shares (or other property) the same day).

@John: taxes are often used to redistribute wealth, either directly of indirectly. Surely that’s where the money for welfare payments, employment insurance, pensions, and child benefits come from? Often these benefits are means-tested or taxed back to eliminate net benefits to the wealthy.

Even those taxes that do distribute wealth are not primarily meant for just that, redistributing wealth. It is well know (well, perhaps well-known outside the USA) that keeping all income within a certain bandwidth, say the highest earner making no more than, say, 15 times the amount the lowest earner makes, is required to maintain a stable society. So that income re-distribution effect by taxes can be seen as a way to keep society stable in the long term.